Thoughts and ideas of a dyslexic designer/developer
I have recieved emails and im's from people asking why comments are not working? I honestly dont know but I am investigating the issue. Seems only my blog is affected no one elses. Which is good news, but its going to take me sometime to work out whats happening and fix. I'm apologetic for those who lost there comments recently…
S5 is a slide show format based entirely on XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript. With one file, you can run a complete slide show and have a printer-friendly version as well. The markup used for the slides is very simple, highly semantic, and completely accessible. Anyone with even a smidgen of familiarity with HTML or XHTML can look at the markup and figure out how to adapt it to their particular needs. Anyone familiar with CSS can create their own slide show theme. It's totally simple, and it's totally standards-driven.
At long last a way to do presentations without using powerpoint, keynote or openoffice formats. Meyers work is great and well thought out specially for a opera user like me. Its not that I dont like using open office (what i prefer out of the three), its just I usually have to outline it some application like Java outline editor then convert it into something open office will read. Then I end up creating a powerpoint version, pdf version and open office version. i never use the html convert because its usually really nasty and non standard based.
Anyway, i'm going to use it for a presentation to BBC Learning English about RSS and Enclosures. And at the same time write a xsl to convert opml to this xhtml S5. I thought about other transformations but I dont have the time no more, plus it would be alot easier to just do a opml to pdf rather than xhtml S5 to pdf or open office (wouldnt even attept to do keynote). If all goes well i will adopt it for all my presentations. As someone mentioned it would be great if this was the default option in open office or keynote.
More resources. The slashdot discussion, Opera's thoughts from a while ago, Opera's slideshow generator, Information about Citydesk software
Sarahs a regular at http://hollyoaks.com and noticed during the show today that the stylesheet was missing for a couple of minutes. Then the new style came into effect. I had to natrually check it out. There using Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS 2.0. Theres a bit of Javascript mainly to control the multiple stylesheets which is pretty nice as the default yellow is not great on top of white and the open and close elements which work on all the browsers I've tested it on (opera, firefox, ie and mozilla). Two other things which impressed me. Decent print stylesheet and RSS versions 1.0 and 2.0. Shame the RSS feeds dont contain more than a single paragraph, but its pretty much what everyone else is doing anyway. What I find also really interesting is the link to Mezzoblue about what is RSS and the Accessability statement which is pretty good. On the bad side, its a really shame there not using more semantic elements instead of divs with multiple ids and classes but its all a huge change from the old website.
Been talking to Yoojin about the possibilies of setting up lectures at Ravensbourne again. Then I started thinking, why not use the internet to broadcast the lectures? I mean, I've been meaning to do something interesting with jabber and the icecast streaming server.
So what I'm thinking is, I do a live lecture as such via my connection over audio while in a chat space of somekind? (maybe using the rave jabber conference rooms?). Or shall i forget the audio aspect and just go for a conference room style chat through out? I think I would prefer that as I could do it from anywhere – allowing me to keep a regular timeline, while not affectig anything at home.
I've also been thinking about using meetup more. My previous experiences have been pretty bad, but maybe there will be a chance to hijack one or create my own which consists of lectures and idea throwing around a pub/cafe environment? I mean do people still go to the london meetups?
I don’t think the site http://browsehappy.com is the best or most original idea in the world but it does once again highlight issues with IE and maybe why we should warn/advise the public about other IE. And empower there browsing experience with better browsers.
I for one never use IE unless I have to in work (Legacy systems, I hate them too). I mainly use Opera and Mozilla if there are issues with cookies. But I've installed Firefox on my linux box and may start using it more and more in replacement for Mozilla. Specially because I love Thunderbird and Mozilla calendar. Yet to try sunbird yet…
I'm making some long awaited changes to the garden this week. You should start to notice more images creaping into my design at long last. If you reading this now, you should see the sky or grass backdrop on the cubicgarden banner. I'm getting rid of all the tables except the one which makes up the calendar for now, so the blog will be run using pure css. Going to sort out the VM templates so they churn out XHTML 1.1 or at least XHTML 1.0 strict.
I have hopefully fixed the comment feeds. RSS 0.92 Comments and RSS 2.0 Comments. Some of the changes to structure may take a little longer, as I'm going to use blojsom alot more and maybe use some kind of Wiki for other sections of my garden. The first to change will be the mixes, which will have a simular blojsom style interface and this my main blog will pull in parts from my bookmarks (already a blog) and the mixes. My feeds is also up for a change and sort out but maybe in about 2 or 3 weeks.
So if you notice something odd, dont worry it could be me just messing with stuff. But be warned, I'm working to the W3c standards, if your browser does not support XHTML + CSS2 then it might be time to change it… I recommend Opera 7.5, Mozilla or Firefox.
I'm also on the search for a good quality wiki which has these features.
Editing with preview (live preview would be a bonus)
Editing input options (the topcat type buttons)
Real categories
Hierarchy view
GPL or BSD licence (opensource)
XHTML and CSS support
Multiuser
Search (jakarta lucene would be cool)
Recently changed
CSS themes
Metadata and Diff support
Bookmarking
Calendar
Snipsnap support (Textism would be ideal too)
Rss output (input would be awesome)
XMLRPC or Soap interface
Blog support
Comments
Choices so far.
XWiki – http://www.xwiki.org | Forrest – http://forrest.apache.org | JSPWiki – http://www.jspwiki.org | SnipSnap – http://snipsnap.org | Confluence – http://www.atlassian.com. Confluence is the best wiki i've ever seen shame its not open source. Snipsnap is cool but the blog and wiki combined together makes things confusing, dumping Blojsom is simply not a option. I find JSPWiki too plain and too simplex for what I want. I'm really warming to Xwiki as the author is pretty honest about it and where it sits in the sea of wikis. Shame its only alpha and I think it requires a SQL database. Useful page highlighting alot of the Java Wikis also very useful and upto date.
Sometimes the blunderbuss works…
> Dear ##########
> Given the vociferousness of your argument and clarity we shan't again build a site in flash – if we use flash it would be sited in an HTML based site and we shall always as we did with the main site have a large font no graphics page available. I thank you for your forthrightness and your knowledge of LIFT as an organisation that cares very deeply about accessibility.
> With many thanks for the care and time you have taken
###########
Ok a brief introduction to get people up to speed. Miles and me were planning on going to the Lawrence Lessig lecture last Thursday. So we went to the Lift 2004 site which contained all the information about the event. However we hit a impressively atrocious all-Flash site
. The site drove us mad. So we both wrote seperate emails to the publicly funded LIFT. Mine has not been acted on at all while miles has got a lot futher. The situation is now LIFT have passed miles email on to the designers who built the site. This is the last email sent from Miles. And I would like to say now I'm am shocked and ashamed to be part of an industry where people lie, are lazy and break laws with public money…
Thanks for your email, ##. I have a feeling I'm engaged in a multilateral discussion, which I am taking as giving me license to address an anonymous third party in a “frank and fair” manner, without being overly concerned about hurting the feelings of the “transmission medium”. If I am mistaken in this, please accept my apologies in advance.
Sadly the response does not address any of the concerns I raised. In fact, it looks like a stock answer on the assumption that I am some kind of anti-Flash zealot. I am not an anti-Flash zealot.
Flash has its uses, and a legitimate place on the Web. The response alludes to one (wrapping media in order to achieve a “universal codec”), which is an epiphenomenal rather than core benefit. An example of a _core_ benefit could be Flash's use as a lightweight, graphics-oriented, almost ubiquitous, programming language, cleaner, faster, and more compact than Java, and better able to deliver rich interactivity for, say, online games, than crash-prone Java ever could.
> We used java script to enable roll overs – as we have done on the main site. The use of flash was conscious and we felt it would not serve as a deterrent since 94% of internet users have flash installed – I do take very seriously this issue of the resizing the window, and would certainly not approve that in future.
This is not true. JavaScript is not used on the site to enable rollovers. As most of the site is Flash, there is no need for rollovers. On the “Launch” page, the JavaScript is used to resize the window of the Flash site. In the Flash site, the JavaScript is used as a browser-detection routine to nag users to install a Flash player, and to handle the Close action in the top left of the screen. There is also a popup window handler to launch and display a centred popup window. What this is for is a mystery to me.
The 94% of Internet users have Flash installed argument is a specious argument in this case. It is as relevant to claim that 94% of |nternet users have Cyrillic fonts installed so the site should be written in Russian. I will develop this thesis below.
> A short film made by Societas Raffaello Sanzio can be viewed on the site, it is built in flash since to have used Windows Media Player would have not worked for users accessing the site from MACS.
As I acknowledge, this is a perfectly good justification for Flash – though the reasoning you present is flawed. It is not, however, a justification for building the entire site in Flash. After all, the short film is one small part of the site, not the site in its entirety or its raison d'être (which is, on the contrary, to present information to the public about LIFT 2004). There is no reason why the film couldn't have been wrapped in Flash and embedded in an otherwise HTML site.
However, since you begin your argument with the claim that because 94% of Internet users have Flash (though, you neglect to say, probably not Flash 6 or above – which the site demands) installed, the decision to use Flash is justified, allow me a digression on this point.
Apple claims to have a 4% share of the personal computer market. That means 96% of the market does _not_ use Macs. Of the 4% who use Macs, given their typical profile, at least half must have downloaded and installed the Windows Media Play for Mac OS (I did – others can too!). As you are likely to be ignoring Linux users in your 94% claim, that means 98% of Internet users can view Windows Media Files, and 96% can view them on their native platform – so, what possible justification is there for wrapping Windows Media Files in Flash – as you actually exclude more users (94% is smaller than 98%) that way? Could it be, perhaps, that some of the “creatives” use Macs, and wouldn't want to feel left out?
> We endeavoured to create a site that offered information but also expressed the nature of the artists work.
You can't seriously expect me to believe _that_! The artists concerned are mainly involved in the domain of performance. Since the site is not video-rich (the most obvious way of translating performance directly to the Web), you have carried out a metaphoric expression of the nature of the artists' work. You therefore had absolute freedom to construct the metaphor, since you were not engaged in literal mapping. If you felt that Flash was the only way of making that metaphoric transposition, you have suffered one of the more significant creative failures in the recent history of design.
> It has been an interesting experiment – and LIFT has learnt a great deal from experimenting in this way. We are very grateful for comments received, both praise and criticism, since it will enable us to learn as an organisation, and hone our skills in using new media in dynamic and artistic ways whilst mindful of the principle need to offer clear navigation and clarity of information to the public.
I am endeavouring to treat “you” as an intelligent interlocutor. I would be grateful if “you” would extend the same courtesy to me. A 90s-style exercise in Flashturbation can only count as an experiment if you are experimenting in time-travel or nostalgia. LIFT is doing (I hope) neither.
Let me restate my concerns:
Flash is an inappropriate technology for delivering essentially narrative textual information over the web. It is inappropriate for 2 reasons.
One, Flash wraps textual content into a binary object, making an image of the text.
So, for example, if I wanted to copy something out of the site and paste it into an email to a friend – maybe to encourage them to attend an event – I could not. My friend would have to wade through the site, and may not find the event I was raving about, and so never attend. If I wanted to highlight an Artist's name, and search Google for more information about them, I could not. If I wanted to highlight a venue's address and get a map, its history, or details about assistive technologies offered for people with disabilities, I could not. In short, using Flash to convey narrative text you have failed to understand how the Web differs from print media in a, frankly, catastrophic way. You have created a site that neuters the Web, diminishes to the scale of your withered imagination. In so doing, you have undermined your brand, blinded your vision, and, quite possibly, lost ticket sales.
Two, Flash is not accessible to the partially sighted or visually impaired, and you offer no alternative to such users. In fact, your site is entirely useless for such people.
Excluding people with disabilities from an informational website is clearly bad. But maybe you shout “spastic” after paraplegic people, give the V to blind people, and hurl abuse behind the backs of deaf people. Maybe this makes you feel bold and edgy. Whatever. Legislators, in their wisdom, foresaw the meretricious 94% argument (94% of Internet users have Flash installed and are not blind), and made it illegal for public bodies to create inaccessible websites.
But maybe you smoke a spliff to unwind, and drop some Es whilst out clubbing, so breaking the law connects you with the 18-35 demographic. Whatever. The people working at the LIFT events made a real effort to ensure accessibility. Wheelchair access in the venues, sign-language interpreters: the business, exemplary stuff. They seem like nice young people – working hard into the night, maybe volunteers, probably on minimum wage, really taking care to ensure nobody is excluded.
And you conduct an “experiment” that shows you don't give a toss. Is accessibility off the brand-message? Do cripples cramp your style? Dare you face the people working on LIFT 2004 and tell them that? “We know how hard you're working to include everybody in LIFT 2004, so we built a website that excluded some of them. Man, that is so edgy, I'm on a precipice!”
> Please do pass on my gratitude to ####### for having provided such a comprehensive response and for his time and commitment in doing so.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
Cheers
################
Some progress from CSS 2.1 to CSS 3 is happening in the W3c.
Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 revision 1
This spec describes CSS 2.1, a revision of CSS 2 that removes rarely implemented features and adds a few new ones including media-specific style sheets, content positioning, table layout, features for internationalization and some properties related to user interface. It also fixes a few bugs in the CSS2 spec “the most important being a new definition of the height/width of absolutely positioned elements, more influence for HTML's 'style' attribute and a new calculation of the “clip” property”. Features removed iunclude text-shadow, display: marker, display: compact, and content: uri tag.
CSS Print Profile
This module “defines a subset of Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 [CSS2] and CSS3 module: Paged Media [PAGEMEDIA] specifically for printing to low-cost devices. It is designed for printing from mobile devices, where it is not feasible or desirable to install a printer-specific driver, and for situations were some variability between the device's view of the document and the formatting of the output is acceptable.”
CSS3 Paged Media Module
This module “describes the page model that partitions a flow into pages. It builds on the CSS3 Box model module and introduces and defines the page model and paged media. It adds functionality for pagination, page margins, headers and footers, image orientation. Finally it extends generated content for the purpose of cross-references with page numbers.”
All this comes days after the W3C Scalable Vector Graphics Working Group posted the fifth public working draft of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.2.
The moto which I subscribe to.
The interesting thing is that this guy also quotes the 5K awards as a real example of Creativity in constraints
. I also saw Stuart's presentation at the Doors 6 and actually met him afterwards.
Rushkoff stirs the content management pot at the feature.
Content Management is for losers. Young people may have discovered the dark truth about digital media: the person who wins the right to store a piece of data has actually won the booby prize.
Well done Rushkoff, I tend to agree with alot of the sense he talks… Been also keeping an eye on Theoretical PerspectivesRushkoff's online classroom. With that and danny boy you can get some really good ideas about interaction design…
In my post a couple days back, I emailed alot of leading heads of the internet about talking at the college. Well I'm pleased to say Richard Stallman has agreed to come talk in May.
I should be in the UK in May, so I could give a speech.
So simple and yet so amazing… This is going to be a huge event and I think there will not be enough space to house all the people who would like to hear him speak.
I've been writing emails and back and forth to some of the leading lights of the internet. Hoping to get them into college to do talks to students and staff.
Some of the people in my hit list include, Howard Rhiengold, Lawrence Lessig, Linus Torvalds, Jon Johansen, Richard Stallman, etc, etc… Hoping to add to the list when I actually recieve replies…
Ok I've recieved lots of auto-replies and a Authorize from mailblocks but the only person to really reply is Howard Rhiengold so far…
Ian —
Why don't you consider joining Brainstorms? That way, you'd have contect with others who share your interest — and you'd know when I might be in the UK. (No plans at present, but I usually make it to London every two or three years).
Here's info. Let me know if you are interested: http://www.rheingold.com/community.html
You are invited to the thirty-ninth AIGA Experience Design London meeting.
Your computer is broken!
We have been using the same graphical users interfaces for 20 years, since the Apple Macintosh (launched on 24 January 1984) killed the command line. Our tools today would have been easily recognisable by maverick genius Doug Engelbart in the 1960s, and the Xerox PARC fraternity of the 70s. Yet in the meantime we have applied computers to many more, and more complex, tasks including communication, information retrieval, collaboration and planning, and entertainment.
How does the design of GUIs need to evolve, where is this happening, and what can we learn from it? Where do we go beyond the desktop metaphor? And application-centric computing? How do we manage 1000s of files, message, and other data elements? What new input devices are appropriate?
Web design has learned from GUIs, and now GUIs are drawing on (and are often based on) Web technologies. (And although everyone has a view on Web design most people ignore the more important interface that they use every day.) Eventually Web design and GUI design will merge and we will need to absorb the deeper lessons GUI designers have learned over three decades.
We will look at the past, present and future of GUIs to lay the ground for an informed debate.
THE EVENT
– – – –
Presentation: The past of user interfaces
— Event chair Nico Macdonald will discuss the history of GUIs.
Presentation: The present of user interfaces
— Nikki Barton, Creative Director of Nykris Digital Design, will present her company's work on the Aqua and MacOS X versions of some of Microsoft's MacOS products. (Presenter biographies can be found on the group Web site.)
Presentation: The future of user interfaces
— Here we invite you to give a 3-4 minute presentation on a key user interface challenge or solution. If you would like to take part please say so in your RSVP (see below) and we will forward you presentation information.
DETAILS
– – – –
When:
Thursday 29 January, 6:30 for 7PM (until 9:00 PM)
Where:
The Design Council, 34 Bow Street, London WC2E 7DL
(opposite the Royal Opera House)
http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/howtofindus/
RSVP:
mailto:RSVP@design-agenda.org.uk?Subject=AIGAExpDesLondon%20Jan%202004
There is no payment to attend. Attendance will be limited to 80 people.
Please only RSVP if you are likely to be able to attend.
Please email all enquiries to this address, not the Design Council.
NEXT EVENT
– – – –
Our February event is likely to focus on gaming and interaction design.
Quick note to point out that my students blogs are now live and kicking over at http://80.177.26.60/blojsom/blog/interaction_one. This is its temporary place for now. Feel free to comment about anything they write. I hope to provide the same to the 2nd year interaction designers too very soon…http://80.177.26.60/blojsom/blog/interaction_two